Birmingham schools Superintendent Stan Mims presented the Board of Education with a plan Monday to close 18 schools over the next three years to cope with falling enrollment.

Board members asked Mims to make some changes to the plan, which includes closing 12 elementary schools, two middle schools, two high schools and two kindergarten- through eighth-grade schools.

It also recommends building a new Huffman High School to replace the existing one and a K-8 school for the Oxmoor Valley.

"Consolidating schools will allow us to broaden the curriculum and provide richer, more well-rounded offerings," Mims said. Right now, he said, the system is spreading the teaching staff thin, and many elementary and middle schools offer no fine arts because having so many schools means the system can't afford to offer classes beyond the basics that are required.

The board won't vote on the plan until late January. Mims gave members a first draft of the document Monday and said he will continue to rework the document until all board members are satisfied. The board will hold several work sessions to discuss the plan, and Mims will meet with a task force of community members and business leaders to get input, he said.

Mims' plan is based on a report released less than two weeks ago by Gude Management, a consulting firm the board hired to draft a master plan for the district. Gude recommended that the district close 20 of its 65 schools. Just before that report, a representative from the state Department of Education had told the board to close 20 schools.

Birmingham schools have lost 1,343 students since last year, and enrollment now is 28,393. The Gude report projected that the school system will shrink to 20,000 students by 2017. The system's peak enrollment was 70,000 in the 1970s.

While Mims said his plan was based on Gude's report, he said he also took into consideration geography and where each school was located.

"The current school structure was created during the years of segregation in Birmingham, when black and white schools were the norm," he said. As a result, many schools are just a couple of miles from others, and it makes perfect sense to consolidate those schools, he said.

Board member Virginia Volker said she worried that creating large schools will mean more fights, disciplinary problems and general disruptions.

"What will happen with really large high schools?" she said. "Look what happened at J-O."

When Ensley and Jackson-Olin high schools consolidated into one high school, dozens of fights broke out leading to numerous expulsions, suspensions and the hiring of more personnel to supervise students.

Mims said because the schools will be larger, the state will give them more funding.

The state funds schools based on enrollment and the larger the school, the more money the school gets for teachers and assistant principals, Mims said.